How to Give a Killer Wedding Speech

Last updated: March 14, 2026

Whether you are the bride, the groom, or a member of the wedding party, planning a wedding speech can be stressful. It’s tough to know what to say and how to say it.

These basic tips will set you up for the best chances of succeeding. Each category is designed to help the bride deliver the best wedding speech possible. However, it will help anyone deliver a great speech in any scenario.

1. Plan ahead

A well structured plan will go a long way to help you with your wedding speech. If you leave everything to the last minute, you’ll be stressed and flustered when it comes time to deliver your speech. Or, you may not have time to give your wedding speech the attention it deserves.

To solve this, opt into a wedding subscription box at least 12 months before the wedding. The miss to mrs bridal box and many other retailers provide helpful planning tools and speech templates. This ensures all of your decisions are made on time and helps you with your frameworks. Discovering the items inside of your bridal box subscriptions will remind you of why you are getting married and put a smile on your face. This is an excellent mood to be in while writing your wedding speech. Reducing your stress and giving yourself tools is a surefire way to give you the best chance at success.

2. Consider your audience

To write a perfect wedding speech it’s important to understand who is in the audience. Will they get your jokes? Are your anecdotes going to go right over their heads? Will they find your comments inappropriate? A successful wedding speech engages the audience. Make an effort to connect with your friends and family members, and your speech will be more memorable.

You can break the ice by talking about the weather with some ice puns, make pop culture references, lightly roast the bride and groom or make them groan with some cheesy humor. 

This is also great advice for determining what NOT to say. Avoid anything offensive and make a point to avoid saying anything negative about the newlyweds.

3. Choose your tone

Decide on a style when determining what to say at a wedding speech. The best speeches are natural. So, it’s appropriate to recognize your usual demeanor and emphasize your existing strengths. If you are usually serious, a wedding may not be the best venue to start testing out jokes. Recognizing your style will enable you to structure your thoughts better.

4. Make it personal

Write your marriage speech as if you are speaking directly to the guests. Your speech isn’t about you. It’s about your relationship with everyone in the room. Whenever possible, include a story that involves individuals or groups of people to involve them in the narrative.

Start this process with a few bullet points. This will build the basic structure of your wedding speech and help you to zero in on your main focus. From there you can evolve your basic structure into a narrative.

5. Practice , practice, practice

It’s a best practice to refine your wedding speech over time. Write it once, and then read it out loud. You’ll find that what you wrote down doesn’t resonate the way that you intended. Repeat the process several times over, and include some friends and ask them to provide advice. Not only will this result in the best message possible, it will help you commit the speech to memory for the most natural delivery.

6. Avoid making it difficult

There are certain things, like too much alcohol or trying to deliver your wedding speech by memory alone, that will reduce your chances of a successful speech. Feel free to use your memory to deliver your speech, but you should keep note cards just in case. You may feel that a drink or two will ease your nerves. But, in reality, this will make it more difficult to remember everything and will damage your cadence.

7. Pace yourself

Don’t let your nerves get the best of you. Paying attention to who is speaking before and after you, and if anyone has gone over their allotted time will tell you how dynamic you have to be. To hit your window of time, you may have to speed things along or drop parts of your speech. If you’ve followed the rest of our advice, you’ll be able to do this in a natural manner.

 

Author: Anastasia Beluschenko, with a specialty in wedding dresses, joined Wedding Forward over five years ago. She knows everything about wedding dresses from styles to trends, fit, and designers. Her great sense of style makes it easy for her to expertly predict the newest and hottest wedding dress trends. For leisure, she loves court tennis and stretching.